WASHINGTON – Two days after polls closed in the 2022 midterm elections, some of the nation’s most consequential races have not yet been decided. Arizona and Nevada, in particular, had thousands of ballots left to process.
Though Republicans and pundits predicted a “red tsunami,” control of the U.S. House and Senate are still up for grabs.
In one of the tightest races yet to be decided, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert is now several hundred votes ahead of her challenger after starting the day just a few dozen votes behind.
In his first address to the nation following the election, President Joe Biden chided the press and pundits for predicting a Republican sweep that “didn’t happen” and said he would work with his conservative counterparts regardless of the election’s outcome.
“Regardless of what the final tally is… I’m prepared to work with my Republican colleagues,” Biden said. “The American people have made clear that they expect Republicans prepared to work with me as well.”
Here’s what we know about outstanding midterm election races as of Thursday morning.
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Boebert now ahead in Colorado with 98% of votes counted
Republican Lauren Boebert has pulled ahead of her opponent, Democrat Adam Frisch, by over 400 votes, according to the latest from the Associated Press with 98% of votes reported.
Boebert has trailed Frisch by a slim margin since Tuesday, in what became a surprisingly tight race between the incumbent and her Democratic challenger.
– Savannah Kuchar
Meanwhile, in Reno… ‘We are working on it. Please be patient.’
In Nevada’s Washoe County, Nevada’s second-most populous, the vast majority of uncounted ballots won’t be tallied until Friday and maybe later than that. Mail-in ballots are still arriving. About 4,000 came Wednesday. Some 18,000 showed up on Election Day, none of which have been tallied yet.
“We are working on it. Please be patient,” interim registrar of voters Jaime Rodriguez urged. “It does take time. We don’t want to do it fast – we want to do it right.”
About 25,000 votes separated incumbent Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto from Trump-backed Republican challenger Adam Laxalt with 83% of the vote counted statewide as of midday Thursday on the East Coast.
Ballots that arrive through Saturday and are postmarked by Nov. 8, the day of the midterm election, will be counted.
Washoe and Clark account for about 90% of the state’s 1.8 million active registered voters. On Wednesday evening, Clark County released additional results that placed Cortez Masto ahead of Laxalt by 33,179 votes, or 51.3% to 45.8%.
In Washoe County, the margin was 0.2 percentage points – 356 votes. Our colleagues at the Reno Gazette Journal, a member of the USA TODAY Network report that officials expect to provide an updated count today. We’ll have all the latest here.
– Donovan Slack, USA TODAY; Rio Lacanlale and Mark Robison, Reno Gazette Journal
GOP representative-elect: ‘Would like to see the party move forward’ from Trump
Republican Rep.-elect Mike Lawler, who narrowly defeated Democratic campaign committee chair Sean Patrick Maloney in the race to represent New York’s 17th Congressional District, told CNN on Thursday morning that he would like to see the Republican party move forward from former President Donald Trump.
When asked if Trump was responsible for the lack of a “red wave” on Tuesday, Lawler said there needs to be more focus on issues than personalities and that the party moving in a different direction “is a good thing, not a bad thing.”
“I would like to see the party move forward,” he said. “I think any time you are focused on the future, you can’t so much go to the past.”
– Rachel Looker
Arizona county officials defy court order, move forward…
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